Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Safety, Awareness & Memorial

We've had a run of bad luck in our cycling community. Of course we are only sort of a community since we all ride different ways for different reasons. But our loose community, brothers and sisters all, rolling on two wheels for joy, health, and reasons unknown all have stories of near misses and worse...

It goes with the territory.

But does it have to?

Sure we swim with fishes a hundred (or more) times our weight and many times as fast. We still each take our actions with a singular human brain whether it's pushing two pedals to propel us forward or only one. There are more two pedal people these days so it stands to reason there will be more problems but perhaps with more awareness for one and two pedal people, we can all be safer.

In order to reach that goal we all need to come together and look out for each other. It's easy to say it's the cars that need to pay attention to us. Just the other day I watched my sweetie nearly get T-boned by a car pulling out of a side street onto the busy road we were on. It was dark but we were lit up like christmas trees. Damn drivers I thought but then a day later when I was in a car, I saw a couple cyclists, also in the dark but wearing dark clothing and without lights weaving in and out of traffic. Damn cyclists I thought but it's really damn people I should be saying.

We all need to think how our transportation choices interact with everyone on the road.

While we're thinking about this perhaps it would be a good start to join the memorial ride this weekend.

2 comments:

I think it would be much better on the roadways if people were more aware of each other and used two pedals more often than just one. The benefit of using two pedals in a car is slowing down and following the posted speed limits.